Microsoft Labs posted an interesting article / update on OfficeTalk testing today (testing for quite some time if you take into account the first official posts were in March 2010). ‘Microsoft’s Twitter for businesses‘ application. The most notable statistic highlighting that
83%of OfficeTalk’s regular users found interesting information they wouldn’t have found otherwise and that 72%agreed that OfficeTalk helped them find out what others are working on and reach out to ask questions.
Effective communication within an any organisation is essential. From my conversations with @stuartridouttoday, its clear that email is not the answer, indeed it may be part of the problem. Misuse of distribution groups and general email overload seem to be prevalent in both our schools. Is Office Talk a possible remedy? Sadly, the update didn’t suggest where the development roadmap and product deployment was heading, so I left a blog comment.
Where / how do you expect it to be deployed commercially? As an addition to Microsoft Office? As a separate product? As a add-in for Outlook? Sharepoint?
Later adding Outlook Social Connector. I will update with any feedback. Anyone have experience of trialling OfficeTalk or using Micro-communications tools within school? Statusnet? Messenging (IM)? We trialled Sparklast year but didn’t proceed with a roll it out to the whole school community and we have more than enough new IT for September but OfficeTalk is definitely a product to review in January.